


Things We Did and Didn't Say

by DesireeArmfeldt



Category: due South
Genre: M/M, POV Third Person Limited, Possibly Unrequited Love, Pre-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-17
Updated: 2016-11-17
Packaged: 2018-08-31 11:56:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8577628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesireeArmfeldt/pseuds/DesireeArmfeldt
Summary: Ray Vecchio and Ray Kowalski meet for an informal briefing before Vecchio goes undercover.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the prompt "And if some dim bulb should say/we were in love in some way/kick all his teeth in for me/and if you feel like keeping on kicking, feel free" at [ds-snippets](http://ds-snippets.livjournal.com), only it got way too long for a snippet.
> 
> Quote is from "Meaningless" by The Magnetic Fields.

“So. . .your partner’s a Mountie?” Ray’s replacement looks nothing like him: three days worth of blond stubble on his jaw, ratty sweatshirt, and hair moussed up like a teenager trying to look tough.

“Did you sleep through your briefing or what?” Ray snaps.

“Oh, I got the briefing. Up to here, believe me.” The guy—Ray doesn’t even know his name, reasons of security, blah blah blah—gestures a foot above his head. “Just being, you know. Polite.”

“Skip it. I got no time for polite.”

A kicked-puppy-dog look flashes over the guy’s face before he covers it with a decent try at indifference, shrugs, and drawls, “Suit yourself. So. The Mountie.”

“What about him?” Ray asks.

“What about him, is right. What’s the deal?”

It’s Ray’s turn to shrug. “He came to Chicago looking for the guy that had his old man whacked. Found him, turned him in, got basically kicked out of Canada for his trouble. Now he works out of the Canadian Consulate here.”

“But he works with you.”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re friends.”

“Yeah.”

“Good friends.” The guy leans forward, elbows on the table, head cocked to one side, watching Ray through narrowed eyes.

“Yes, good friends,” Ray shoots back at him, refusing to flinch. This guy thinks he’s so tough? Where Ray’s going, they eat bozos like him for appetizers.

Give him credit, though: he doesn’t back down from Ray’s stare, either. He just says, playing casual, “That it?”

“What?”

“That all you are? Good friends?”

“Friends, partners.”

“Right, _partners._ ” Mr. Replacement smirks—then sucks in a shocked breath as Ray hauls him over the table by his shirt front. One hand slaps the table for balance, the other grabs Ray’s wrist, and they freeze like that, nose-to-nose, teeth bared and panting like junkyard dogs.

Ray forces his fingers to loosen their grip on the thick cotton sweatshirt. The other guy lets go after Ray does.

“Sorry,” Ray mumbles as he sits back down.

“I see why they tapped you to play mobster.” The voice is mocking, but Ray saw fear flicker in the guy’s eyes a second ago and he can’t forget it now.

He keeps his own face blank as he swallows down a rush of nausea. Never mind where it came from; starting tomorrow, he loses control like that, he’s dead.

“So, what?” asks the blond man as he drops into his own seat. “I don’t want to be a jerk, here, but if I’m gonna be you, I need to know. You and the Mountie. . .have some kind of thing?”

A thing. Yeah, that’s one way to describe it. Maybe if they’d _had_ the thing, he would’ve had to come up with a name to put to it, but first things first, he’d told himself as he was working up the nerve to proposition Fraser—ask him out—hell, _court_ him, even. Do it right, sweet and slow and old-fashioned, the kind of thing Fraser would go for: flowers and moonlight walks and goodnight kisses. . .

And then Fraser was a no-show at Ray’s birthday party after he swore blind he’d be there, and when Ray tracked him down, come to find out he was shacked up with some woman Ray’d never heard of. (Never heard of her then. Wishes he’d never heard of her, now.) And after it all went south and Fraser was in the hospital with a bullet in his back and his heart in pieces on the floor, he and Ray made their peace, but. . .Yeah: but.

“Not a thing like you’re thinking,” says Ray, forcing the words past his clenched jaw. “We’re friends. It’s. . .complicated.”

The other guy’s leaning back in his chair, arms crossed, but he’s watching Ray intently with an expression that’s weirdly familiar. He’s doing the sympathetic listening thing, Ray realizes: that thing that Fraser does, where he lulls you into believing that whatever horrible thing is happening to you, if you just tell him all about it, somehow everything will work out for the best.

Well, _that’s_ a load of bull. If Ray didn’t know that already, he sure as hell has the proof now. And this guy, whoever he is, ain’t Fraser; not even close.

“Anyway, not your problem,” Ray says sharply. The guy opens his mouth to protest, but Ray rolls right over him. “You work with him, you hang out with him, you run stupid errands and take pointless risks and keep him from getting his fool head blown off. That’s all you gotta do.”

His glare works better this time; the guy breaks eye contact and looks down at his hands. Ray wishes he felt smug about that.

“Listen. . .” the guy says after a little while, as he picks at a hangnail. “I got divorced last year. It was. . .bad. Is bad. Like, I’m signing up to be someone else for maybe years, so. . .okay?”

Ray gets what he’s trying to do. It’s decent of him, and it’s not like he’s the one who owes Ray anything in this situation. But Ray’s too damn tired for this. All he wants to do is fall into bed and not dream and wake up as somebody else.

“Look, I gotta go,” he says, then levers himself to his feet. “Up early tomorrow.”

He tosses a twenty on the table to cover the drinks—he can at least give the guy that much—and walks out. If this were a movie, he’d turn back and say. . .something. _Look out for him,_ or _Tell him so long for me,_ or. . .or. . .whatever. If he knew the right words, maybe he wouldn’t be in this lousy bar in the first place, but here he is, and his plane leaves first thing in the morning and anything else? That’s another guy’s problem, now.


End file.
